This week EE Times will feature updates on some of the carbon-reducing technologies being developed or already in use that could help companies, countries and citizens reduce their carbon footprint. These are some examples to show the infinite variety and to give credit to engineers and companies working on them.
There is little doubt that the climate is heating up (see NASA GISS chart below) and that it is due to the production of greens-house gases, which have been steadily increasing since the maturation of the industrial revolution circa 1880, according to The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2015) meeting this week in Paris at the Conference of the Parties (COP21, Nov. 30–Dec. 11).
Last year the IPCC declared that scientists were 95 percent certain that global warming is being caused (mostly) by increasing concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide—most of which is being produced by electrical power plants and internal combustion engines.
Carbon-free sustainable electrical power generation has been accomplished with power-generating river dams since the invention of the electrical generator, but in many places the dams are being disassembled because of the negative impact they have had on fish runs. No matter. We now have even cleaner methods of electrical power generation.
Solar cells
The most promising zero-carbon electrical power generators are solar cells, which already come in all sorts of formulations, sizes and capacities.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, every hour, enough energy from the sun reaches Earth to meet the world’s energy usage for an entire year. Of course its impossible to cover the lighted half of the 198 million square miles of the Earth’s surface in solar cells. Even collecting all 365 days of the year with widely distributed solar cell arrays illuminated half the day (12/7) at 20 percent efficiency would take over 225 thousand square miles to satisfy the entire world’s need for energy—a seemingly unachievable goal.
However, that is not stopping the world’s scientists from trying. One of the latest attempts comes from multi-band solar cells
Berkeley Lab’s trick is creating a defect-free atomically thin film of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) to create ultra-high-efficiency solar cells (and bright yet transparent displays for that matter).
“Solar cells are able to provide the highest possibly voltage when the photoluminescence quantum yield (a parameter that is extremely sensitive to defects) is perfect.”
Gasoline forever
With the Saudi’s pumping enough oil to keep prices below $2 a gallon, there is little incentive to pay a premium price for a electric car. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is counting on this, plus the fact that internal combustion still has the highest performance to weight ratio, by continuing to create ever lighter weight powertrain materials. ORNL’s stated target is Obama’s 55 miles per gallon mandate by 2025 and if they meet their goal–with near-zero emissions–the slow adoption of electric vehicles (EV) will be of little consequence.
ORNL claims that by “using higher temperature cast aluminum alloys we can contribute to cutting down green-house gases emissions using two beneficial characteristics; lighter weight and increased temperature capacity. The higher temperature capacity of cylinder head materials enables combustion strategies that result in higher efficiency engines that burn less fuel and generate fewer emissions,” ORNL scientist James Allen Haynes told EE Times.
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1 Comment
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technology Tackling Climate Change
Getting industry innovation behind world needs
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328360&
This week EE Times will feature updates on some of the carbon-reducing technologies being developed or already in use that could help companies, countries and citizens reduce their carbon footprint. These are some examples to show the infinite variety and to give credit to engineers and companies working on them.
There is little doubt that the climate is heating up (see NASA GISS chart below) and that it is due to the production of greens-house gases, which have been steadily increasing since the maturation of the industrial revolution circa 1880, according to The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2015) meeting this week in Paris at the Conference of the Parties (COP21, Nov. 30–Dec. 11).
Last year the IPCC declared that scientists were 95 percent certain that global warming is being caused (mostly) by increasing concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide—most of which is being produced by electrical power plants and internal combustion engines.
Carbon-free sustainable electrical power generation has been accomplished with power-generating river dams since the invention of the electrical generator, but in many places the dams are being disassembled because of the negative impact they have had on fish runs. No matter. We now have even cleaner methods of electrical power generation.
Solar cells
The most promising zero-carbon electrical power generators are solar cells, which already come in all sorts of formulations, sizes and capacities.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, every hour, enough energy from the sun reaches Earth to meet the world’s energy usage for an entire year. Of course its impossible to cover the lighted half of the 198 million square miles of the Earth’s surface in solar cells. Even collecting all 365 days of the year with widely distributed solar cell arrays illuminated half the day (12/7) at 20 percent efficiency would take over 225 thousand square miles to satisfy the entire world’s need for energy—a seemingly unachievable goal.
However, that is not stopping the world’s scientists from trying. One of the latest attempts comes from multi-band solar cells
Berkeley Lab’s trick is creating a defect-free atomically thin film of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) to create ultra-high-efficiency solar cells (and bright yet transparent displays for that matter).
“Solar cells are able to provide the highest possibly voltage when the photoluminescence quantum yield (a parameter that is extremely sensitive to defects) is perfect.”
Gasoline forever
With the Saudi’s pumping enough oil to keep prices below $2 a gallon, there is little incentive to pay a premium price for a electric car. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is counting on this, plus the fact that internal combustion still has the highest performance to weight ratio, by continuing to create ever lighter weight powertrain materials. ORNL’s stated target is Obama’s 55 miles per gallon mandate by 2025 and if they meet their goal–with near-zero emissions–the slow adoption of electric vehicles (EV) will be of little consequence.
ORNL claims that by “using higher temperature cast aluminum alloys we can contribute to cutting down green-house gases emissions using two beneficial characteristics; lighter weight and increased temperature capacity. The higher temperature capacity of cylinder head materials enables combustion strategies that result in higher efficiency engines that burn less fuel and generate fewer emissions,” ORNL scientist James Allen Haynes told EE Times.